Vague generalities

I like vague generalities, precisely because they're vague. When using vague generalities, it's a lot harder for someone to correct you, unlike precise generalities. For example:

Precise generality: 99 percent of college students drink at some point in college.
Vague generality: A lot of college students drink at some point in college.

Because I've provided a precise amount of college students that drink, someone could look up the statistics and point out that my information is plain wrong. But if they look at my vague generality and check the statistics, how do they compare the two? even if the percentage is low (Which it isn't) it will still be a large number of people because the college student demographic is so high. So it could still qualify as "a lot" of students. Throwing around vague generalities gives me a lot of lee way to be proven right. On the other hand, if I'm speaking in precise generalities, my claim is much more likely to be disputed because it's much more specific information. My avenues of being correct are much smaller than if I were to be speaking in vague, sweeping generalizations.

Considering the Social Organization

I think writing critically about a specific social organization was a very useful exercise. It helped me actually be critical about specific organizations instead of simply assuming what they do. For example, because I had to go out of my way to critically examine things I would normally not think twice about - advertisements, claims, beliefs of the organization, etc. I could see what kind of fallacies they employed in their writing and what appeals they would use to get people to pay attention, and how they used celebrity endorsements as well. So overall, I thought the assignment was very useful, because I learned to look more critically when any organization makes a vague claim or when they employ some sort of fallacy in their reasoning, or even try to use an appeal to emotion in order to get money from people (in the case of something like a charity, anyway)

General Claims

Everyone uses general claims. In fact, I just used one. I think people use general claims way too much. They're about as command as people using the word "like" or "uh" after every couple of words. Of course, the problem I have with people using general claims to much is that when they use them they tend to be making things up. For example, they say something like, "You don't like ice cream? but everyone loves ice cream!" the general claim they use is obviously a lie because it is contradicted by the previous statement. The idea of general claims actually reminds of made up statistics, except two things:

1) No specific percentages, only estimates like "some", "most", "at least x".

2) Most people (general claim!) tend to call you out less on general claims than on statistics, mainly because the general claims are so vague that it sounds like common knowledge from the way they're told.

I don't know why, but I have the irresistible urge to type this quote:
"Sixty percent of the time, it works every time"

Internet advertising

While it's unlikely that you'll see one of these ads at this point, when I think of internet advertising I think of a video game called Evony. Here's a link to the history of Evony's advertising:

If you notice the progression of the advertisements, the models have less and less clothes on. It almost seems like a parody. The ads start saying things like, "Play discreetly in your browser." The funniest thing about this is that the game itself has little to do with the ads. From what I can remember reading about the game, it was a "sim" type game where you were some sort of overseer of an area and you would build some sort of city with an army or something. While I have no evidence besides the ads, I would wager that, considering the ads have nothing to do with the game, the ads were solely to get people to click on them. While this claim seems to be pretty plausible, the shocking thing is that the ads seemed to have worked. Why else would the company make more of those ads?

Mistaking the person for the argument

A: My mom said children are brats and that's why I shouldn't have them.
B: Why are you listening to her advice? She doesn't even have any.

Besides the obvious problems with this argument, this argument is also another case of mistaking the person for the argument. Speaker B is implying that speaker A's mom doesn't know what she's talking about because she doesn't have any kids. Speaker B is also implying that Speaker A's mom could only come to the conclusion that kids are brats if she has her own kids. This type of fallacy is actually really common, I think. Many people mistake the person for the argument. Especially for people in high levels of administration and such. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting these people to not be hypocritical, but I think the problem with this is that when one of these persons in administration end up doing something that is contradictory to what they are saying, they instantly lose all credibility and any of the arguments they made, whether they were valid or strong, are now deflected with, "Are you kidding? isn't this the same person that did that?"

Repairing Arguments

Here's an example of an argument that needs to be repaired:

This book costs five dollars. If I buy this book, I will have no money left.

While the argument implies that I have five dollars on hand, to make this argument strong I need to explicitly say that I have five dollars. If I add that to the argument, then my argument becomes strong. I have five dollars on hand, so if I buy the book, which costs five dollars, I will have no money left. Even though it seems like a given argument that I have five dollars, It's important to add that I have five dollars on hand because it could turn out that the premise was all wrong and I only had four dollars and fifty cents on hand or something, and I just happen to be bad at math. It's best not to assume someone's implications are correct when you can have them explicitly tell you and verify for yourself whether the premises are correct or not.